▪ Brandon Knight’s NBA career has been the bumpiest of rides. After leading Kentucky to the Final Four in 2011, Knight has been traded from Detroit to Milwaukee to Phoenix, where he started just five games last season. Monday brought the bad news Knight will miss the 2017-18 season because of a torn ACL.

▪ During the All-Star break, some idiot wrote that there were five reasons to be optimistic about the Cincinnati Reds in the second half. Those same Dreads were 2-11 post-break after being spiked by the Yankees on Wednesday. Wonder who that idiot could have been?

▪ Surprising name showing up in the “under consideration” lists among major college basketball prospects: Vanderbilt.

▪ Now that 6-foot-9 William & Mary grad transfer Jack Whitman has decided he doesn’t want to attend Kansas, after all, the Jayhawks are left with just three eligible big men for next season.

▪ Tough news for Auburn’s sophomore center Austin Wiley, who played well for John Calipari’s USA U19 team at the FIBA World Cup. Wiley will miss four to six weeks with a stress fracture in his leg. He should be ready for the start of practice, however.

▪ Stat in need of improvement: The Bengals were 13th in average yards per game (356.9) last season, but just 24th in average points per game (20.3).

▪ Interesting name on the Bengals’ training camp roster: Louisville kicker Jonathan Brown, who never attempted a field goal in college. An ex-soccer player, Brown handled some kickoff duties for the Cards and signed with the Bengals as a free agent last year but was placed on injured reserve after injuring his foot. The team brought him back this year to compete with Jake Elliott and Randy Bullock for the specialist job.

▪ Did you see where Falcons wide receiver Julio Jones hired a dive team to recover a $100,000 earring he lost while jet skiing on Lake Lanier, north of Atlanta? Meanwhile, the rest of us have to search for our misplaced television remote all by ourselves. Such is life.